For over a century, the Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) theory has been used to illustrate the customer buying process. More recently, it has been proposed that the buying process can actually extend beyond "action" to include "satisfaction." Onboarding is an integral part of customer satisfaction, and there are several ways to do it. Traditionally, manufacturers have provided user manuals with products to shipboard customers. More recently, the client onboarding process has included using knowledge databases, one-on-one training programs, and even detailed YouTube "how-to" videos. While these strategies are effective in their own way, they don't necessarily help improve customer satisfaction. This is especially true for mobile audiences, as form factors present serious challenges to successfully executing onboarding. Bite-sized learning, or microlearning as it is sometimes called, is emerging as a viable and effective form of customer onboarding, especially among mobile users. What is a bite-sized study? Bite-sized learning isn't exactly a new concept and has been around in various forms for years. It is essentially the use of short and targeted study material rather than an exhaustive curriculum. Typical study material here is between 3 and 6 minutes in length, and the goal here is to improve memory and minimize learner concentration. Does it work? A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that bite-size learning is nearly 17% higher than traditional methods. Also found it to be 30% cheaper and provide twice the ROI.

Impact on Onboarding Design First, there are two key differences in the way onboarding is done through bite-sized learning. Traditional onboarding courses (in the form of welcome packs or face-to-face meetings) have multiple learning objectives from each material. Bite-sized learning focuses on enabling clients to learn only one thing from the course. More importantly, there are effects on the structure. According to Professor Michael Kerres, head of the Duisburg Learning Lab, traditional induction courses have a "time drama structure" in their curriculum. He refers to the structure that includes the introduction, description, course exercises, and conclusion. The bite-sized onboarding removes all that and gets right to the point. This brings other advantages to the process. Onboarding courses can now be personalised to the needs of clients, and these learning packages can be re-used to build other custom longer courses as needed. Traditional onboarding materials may not be repurposed flexibly. Implement a bite-sized onboarding method Due to the ubiquity of smartphones, bite-sized learning has grown in popularity lately. However, this entry medium is not necessarily limited to mobile phones. Below are some examples and case studies on how small-scale learning can be implemented. In-app messages One of the most effective ways to teach introductory lessons to your customers is while they are using your product. With contextual in-app messaging, businesses can ensure customers are viewing courses specific to the activity they are performing.

A study published by the Canadian Centre for Science and Education found significant differences in the impact of contextual learning compared to structured courses. Apptentive gives you the exact tools you need to deliver in-app introductory courses to your customers. push notification Push notifications have gained notoriety in recent years due to the number of businesses abusing the channel to market their products. However, they can be a great way to offer bite-sized introductory lessons to your clients. This is especially useful for products and applications with industry mailing list lot of functionality. It is difficult for these apps to demonstrate the full capabilities of their products through traditional introductory courses. Push notifications (limited to one per day) can keep your customers informed about one powerful feature or use case at a time. This increases retention, which in turn increases customer engagement with your product. push notification coach mark Push notifications help inform users about the various features that exist in your product. But it's not very convenient when teaching them how to make these different functions work. Guidance marks are text overlays that may be displayed to users when they first launch the application.

These overlays can highlight various buttons and tell the user what each button does. coach mark Another subtle difference between push notifications and coaching flags is the amount of onboarding that can happen with both tools. As long as they are properly spaced, push notifications work well for any number of introductory lessons for the user. Coach marks, on the other hand, are only useful if there is some functionality to tell the user. In other words, push notifications are a great tool for building loyalty, while coaching badges build better engagement. e-learning modules The above solutions work well when you have to direct users to a consumer-centric mobile application. Enterprise businesses often take weeks to get new customers to join their business. Push notifications and coaching badges often don't meet business needs. In this case, mobile e-learning modules can come in handy. These tools help businesses organize each chapter of onboarding into short snippets that delve into a variety of related topics. New clients need to take these different mini-courses one after the other and also take quizzes to assess their retention rates.